Any work of art offers a significant means whereby we can explore the relationship between life and art. That relationship is central to culture and philosophy. But a work of art presents us with more than a basis for evolving an aesthetique. It also opens up a revealing insight into national character. In this respect, the short story, a form of literary art almost as old as civilization itself and yet as practiced today a typical national phenomenon, is an interesting case in point.
The short story was a well-known artistic form in antiquity. The Bible is full of excellent examples, particularly many episodes in the life of Jesus; perhaps the most polished examples of the form are "The Story of Ruth" from the Old Testament; "The Story of the Prodigal Son" from the New Testament and "The Story of Susannah and the Elders" from the Apochryphia. Even older than Biblical stories are the Fables of Aesop, a collection of animal myths, typical of almost every ancient society. But both Bible stories and beast fables were told with a moral purpose: to instruct or reform men. So, although they are in form short stories their status as pure works of art is somewhat vitiated by their didactic purpose. They do, however, reveal to us man's need to understand the universe, his desire to have a moral basis for his life, and his emotional feelings for plot, for the orderly arrangement of a series of events leading to an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
But it has remained for modern times to provide an artistic (rather than a moral) justification for the short story. And it was in America that the first, and still the most famous, definition was formulated. The earliest American writers did not use the term, short story. Washington Irving labelled his work The Sketch Book (1819-20) and indiscriminately mingled folk tales with essays and descriptive pieces Hawthorne, Poe and Melville all used the word, tales; in 1837, Hawthorne published Twice-Told Tales; Poe's first collection (1837) was Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, whereas Melville called his stories The Piazza Tales (1856).
It remained for Poe, writing a review of Hawthorne's Tales, to attempt the first serious definition of the short story. He insisted that the tale was the only "proper" field for "the exercise of the highest genius" in prose. Poe eliminated the novel on the basis of its "length,", which rendered it "objectionable." Because the novel cannot be read "at one sitting," it cannot avail itself of "the immense benefit of totality." So he established the first purely artistic principle for the composition of the short story. "In the brief tale," Poe continued, "the author is enabled to carry out his full design without interruption. During the hour of perusal, the soul of the reader is at the writer's control."
The definition then continued with this famous paragraph:
A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents: but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents—he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing their preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the out ringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such skill and care, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed. Although this definition is in some ways unsatisfactory (it stresses only totality and unity), it has nevertheless remained one of the best statements yet evolved. Like Aristotle's definitions, it has the advantage of being a description of the actual practice of "the highest genius," in this case Hawthorne. Poe's dictum established a formal philosophical basis for the short story. At the some time, in his works Poe was practicing what he preached.
II
The growth of the short story in America was prompted, however, by much more than a definition. Indeed, external influences were most important; they gave a motivation which was crucial to the development of the form.
First of all, there was the question of international copyright, or, rather, the practice of American printers and publishers who failed or, more exactly, refused to recognize any legal or financial restrictions upon their activities; they pirated without consciences the popular English novels of the times. The consequence of their ruthlessness was that English novels became widely available in America not only because they were good, of course, but also because they were cheap. The latest works of Scott and Dickens, to mention only the must popular and most abused authors, were rushed to America and printed. The history of American publishing is full of fascinating accounts of the activities of the men who built up the lucrative trade in literature.
The result was that American writers faced fierce and almost insurmountable competition. They could try to compete, as Irving and Cooper did, with established British authors, either in the field of the Ravel or the essay. Or they could turn to a related, but non-competitive field, the short story. British magazines, it is true, were circulated in America, but they did not lend themselves to the profitable kind of pirating that novels did. So the American writer was free to engage in this new, but stimulating and closely connected, literary activity. Poe, indeed, worked for a number of magazines. And Melville found markets for his stories even after his novels had ceased to find favor with publishers or the public.
Of course the growth of the magazine publishing business was itself of tae greatest importance in treating a need and a reward for the writing of short stories. The history of the printing and publishing trades again offers a multitude of incidents to demonstrate that the economic motive was a significant factor in this development. Not only magazines but also collections of short stories in book form found favor with the public and publishers alike. In this crucial formative stage the short story was thus favored by it may seem, has a real bearing upon the history of my art.
One must note in this connection, fail to take into account a typical American characteristic: the love for something "quick" and "easy." Indeed, the short story has given way to the short short story, just as Life has led to Quick, novels have been summarized in Omnibook, and all things have led to the Reader's Digest. However much one may deplore this tendency to reduce everything to sugar-coated capsule size, yet it has been a consistent aspect of American life. The drive, the speed, the rush of our civilization are qualities always noted by foreign observers. In the field of literature, this zest has been one of the factors prompting the development of the short story. Millions of Americans read only magazines; they have no time for longer and more complicated (or more demanding?) pieces of writing. The short story has been an obvious literary answer to this requirement; it has adapted itself to the needs of a fiercely and determinedly speedy society.
One of the worst aspects of this particular economic and cultural aspect on American life has been the tendency toward standardization and machine production. The short story has not escaped this fate. In the hands of exploiters, both writers and publishers, it has become a formula. As practiced by such clever manipulators as O. Henry and dozens of other successful magazine writers, the story has become a trick, with a neatly tacked-on ending or an equally mechanical girl-meets-boy plot, skillfully manipulated according to a formula which can be learned (at least so the advertisements assure us) from a correspondence school. But stories of this kind are stories only in name; we have no other term by which to label them. They do not represent art, which is the blending of form and content into an intellectually and emotionally satisfactory whole; they present the machine, the technique, the method: they fill so many pages at so much per word; they represent only one aspect, the material aspect, of American society. Fortunately, their significance is not great; no one claims for them more than a sociological interest.
If the development of an art form shows characteristics typical of the society at large, then it is not at all strange that that same development should also parallel the general history of the society. This presumption is true in the case of the short story. We have, so far, mentioned the economic reasons for the development of this kind of literature; we have also stressed the relationship between the short story and the American love of speed. Now we must turn, for a moment, to the history of the United States, through all of which has run a frontier movement; it is not necessary here to go into the whole thesis (so ably set forth by historian F. J. Turner) of the expanding frontier in America and its significance for the development of the nation and its particular character. Nor is it necessary for us to do more than mention as accompanying aspect of the national development; regionalism, an important condition of life in America and a reality still prevalent in the United States.
That aspect of American life which we call regionalism came into being during the nineteenth century as new regions of our vast country were opened up and became aware of themselves. The step from self-awareness to self-publicizing was easily and quickly taken. Nothing is perhaps mare intrinsic to American life than regional feeling. And since the whole development of this phenomenon occurred at the same time as the short story was establishing itself, it was only natural that the two should have become mutually related. Many of our early and most successful writers of the short story were engaged in practicing it as a means of expressing for a particular region of America; in literary circles, this movement is frequently called the local color school of writing. It still flourishes and has claimed as practitioners practically every American writer.
For our purposes a few examples will suffice: Sarah Orne Jewett with her New England stories, George Washing on Cable's Old Creole Days, celebrating Louisiana, and the extremely popular stories of Mark Twain and Bret Harte about the west. Clearly, such stories (there were, of course, also novels and essays) all have a distinct flavor. Magazines exploited the interest, both local and national, which regionalism aroused. The opening up of the country coincided with the opening up of this new art form; the two things went more than hand in hand; they were the two sides of the same coin. In particular, regionalism or the local color movement was a fortuitous one for literature; it gave us some of our best literature; it provided an emotional motive for writers many of whom composed their best work in the field of the regional short story.
If, on the one hand, commercialism had created the formula story, on the other, sincere artistry has also succeeded in producing distinctive American stories as well. Americans, in addition to other traits, like to excel; they have a drive to make things perfect. American literature, in the few short years of its history, has exemplified this desire with some glorious results. American writing has indeed come of age and the short story has played no small part in this development. One turns with real pleasure to the works of all our great writers to find that practically without exception, they have utilized the short story form. Indeed, it can be maintained that such an eminent contemporary as Ernest Hemingway will eventually be known principally as a short story writer, in which form he has achieved significant artistic success. The names of our distinguished short story writers, from Henry James through Sherwood Anderson to William Saroyan, James Thurber and Eudora Welty, make an impressive list. These writers have conceived of the short story as a distinct artistic form, another kind of poem as it were, whereby they can, and do, see life clearly and profoundly.
No other literary form has had such a remarkable and exciting history. Without trying to be jingoistic, one can maintain that a close relationship does exist between this form and American life; one can see the meaningful parallels. And one can be grateful for the deep beauty which the short story has drawn from and returns to American life.